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[quote=Anonymous]We are a Jewish couple wrestling with secondary infertility. We have a 2.5 year old bio son, but after 3 subsequent miscarriages I've found out that I have immune and clotting issues that will make it impossible to carry another pregnancy to term without significant medical intervention (major drugs that should be fine for baby but could have long-term effects for me). These issues run in my family so it's not a huge surprise, but definitely an unwelcome development. We have enough money (about $40k) to pursue ART or adoption, but not both. And only enough to pursue a couple attempts at ART and maybe one attempt at adoption. So we have to make a choice and that choice will be binding.

We are certain we could love a non-bio child of any race. And it's my understanding that the majority of healthy infants placed for adoption are African American, which is fine with us in the abstract. But we are concerned that we'd be creating a lot of problems if we adopted an AA baby and raised him Jewish. We are not extremely observant -- just major holidays like Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, etc -- but we do intend to send our kid(s) to Hebrew school and give them a typical Conservative Jewish upbringing. Synagogues are not exactly known for their diversity, even Reform synagogues that tend to have higher intermarriage rates. Will we be dooming our child to always feel different and out of place? And conversely, since we are not willing to attend church, will we be cutting him off from his heritage culture? All my AA friends and colleagues attend church regularly and it's my understanding that church plays a huge role in the AA community and in identity formation. Is it fair to cut an AA child off from that, particularly when he also may feel out of place in his adopted community? We desperately want another child, but we are not willing to drastically alter our own identity or practices. Maybe we are selfish but that's how it is, so we have to make decisions within those confines.

DH is additionally concerned about adoption because the adoptees he's known anecdotally -- two of my cousins and some family friends of his parents -- have all had major issues. My cousins' issues are identity crises related to their adoptions. DH's family friend's kid just has issues generally. They are all older than we are and their adoptions were back in the day when adoptions were closed and records hard to obtain, but clearly there have been problems. And there weren't even any cross-racial or cross-religious factors. This obviously gives us pause as well.

I think I know the answer -- drugs/ART or nothing, particularly since DH is more leery of adoption than I -- but any words of advice or experience would be appreciated. Are there things we're not considering? Things we're blowing out of proportion or giving too much weight to? For various reasons we are not interested in international adoption; domestic only, and only an apparently healthy infant. (I know there may be special needs that become apparent down the road just as there could be for bio kids, but we are not open to special needs that are known from the start.)[/quote]

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